The Volk (referred to as AKE in the game files) is an energy assault rifle in Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare. It possesses the highest damage per shot of all the assault rifles at the cost of having a slow cyclic rate of fire and rather high recoil.

The Volk seems to be made out of an AK-47 parts kit mixed together with wires, batteries, an energy muzzle and a polymer stock attached to the weapon, while the wooden handguard and pistol grip and profile remain largely the same.

"Increases the damage output per round with the trade-off of the weapon firing in a semi-auto mode"

— Description of the Volk Marksman upgrade

When all side missions are completed, the Volk unlocks the Volk Marksman upgrade, which greatly increases the damage output per round at the cost of restricting the weapon to semi-auto fire only. The later effect can be bypassed with the Slide Rail attachment. Like the majority of the final unlocks, the Volk Marksman is integrated into the game's multiplayer as the Epic gun perk Spike.

The Volk Gold can be unlocked by completing the campaign on #YOLO difficulty. This variant deals much higher damage than the standard Volk, and has a doubled amount of reserve ammunition.

The Volk is unlocked at level 42, being the last Assault Rifle that can be unlocked.

The Volk is a high damage-per-bullet assault rifle, best comparing to the HVR and R3K. The Volk is a three hit kill. Damage linearly decreases until where the Volk will deal thirty damage, taking four hits to kill. This is offset by the Volk being the slowest firing automatic gun in the game, excluding any variants, at 468 RPM.

The Volk possesses very significant and erratic recoil making it inaccurate at longer ranges, allowing the Foregrip to maintain a use when engaging enemies at a distance. Its iron sights are quite clear, however the player can choose to use an optical attachment for bolstering mid-long range performance, such as a Reflex or an ELO sight attachment. The Volk's handling traits are quite poor for assault rifles, as its switch speeds, aim time and movement speed are slower than other assault rifles. It is also worthy to note the hipfire spread on the Volk is larger than other weapons in the category.

In terms of optical attachments, the Reflex sight is a viable choice on the Volk, as the front post is folded down when aiming. The ELO sight also poses as a viable choice, as the lack of obstruction from sight frames allow for a larger field of view than average. It is ill-advised to use Trojan, Thermal Scope or Scout Hybrid sights on the Volk unless paired with a Foregrip, due to the large amounts of view kick, gun kick and ranged recoil.

The Scout Hybrid can be of some use, seeing as it is an ELO sight paired with a long ranged sight, so it can be sometimes effective to just leave the sight in ELO mode.

The Trojan can be of some use, but it is the sight least suited to long range combat, and therefore, shouldn't always be the first optic a Volk user selects. The Thermal sight completely negates view kick, making the Volk more effective at a middle to long range with the foregrip.

The VMC sight is a interesting, but effective choice on the Volk. It almost completely negates view kick (it stacks with foregrip, significantly reducing the recoil), and adds a great deal of center speed. Because the Volk fires slowly, the increased center speed is more effective, and since this only applies when in long-range mode, it would make sense to leave the benefits of the VMC sight to longer ranges.

In terms of other attachments, the Foregrip maintains its useful purpose of allowing for better control at distances - although some may argue that the grip doesn't reduce the Volk's gunkick, making it somewhat ineffective.

The Quickdraw attachment improves the Volk's slower than average aim time, making the volk much less likely to fail the user in certain situations, and the Faraday Slug allows for a marksman's approach to the Volk by increasing headshot multipliers significantly. The trouble is, the Faraday slug only increases the three-shot kill range, and doesn't make the Goliath epic variant capable of a one-headshot kill, similarly to the Sheiva from Black Ops III.

At the ranges this attachment is effective, its better off to use the Particle Amp, which shouldn't be super effective either, since the Volk already has a very impressive effective range.

Fusion Mag can be useful in many situations, giving a solution to the Volk's small magazine - although it wont be effective for supressive fire, seeing as the weapon has to not fire for a while for it to come into play.

The Suppressor can also feature as a usable attachment, allowing for a stealth alternative if the player wishes to remain hidden - this is even more so due to the Volk Goliath variant's range - almost best in class.

Stock can be a useful attachment, negating the need to aim down sights in the first place in many situations.

Ram Servo is mostly pointless, as reflections barely do any lethal damage, and the damage dealt to scorestreaks is useless as other thing such as launchers and equipment are better suited to an anti-scorestreak role.

In terms of variants, the two common variants are the Regulator and the Deadeye. The former reducing recoil, but only partially. The Stability gun perk can be stacked with the foregrip for an even greater reduction in recoil, albeit not a very useful one (again, courtesy of the gunkick) The Deadeye increases the range of the Volk and can be stacked with Particle Amp for an even greater effect. The resulting range values can be quite overkill at times, as the Volk already has a great range.

The Vexed is a great mid-range defensive variant of the Volk. The On Point gun perk reduces the ADS time for a larger hipfire spread, and the creeper common gun perk increases the movement speed while crouched, allowing for more effective suppressive fire / usage with the stock attachment.

The second Rare variant, the Greed can be an effective replacement for the Regulator as its secondary gun perk is Stability. As well, it is an excellent weapon to shoot for the higher streaks with, as the Rare Jackpot gun perk increases the score towards scorestreaks earned by 10% - this can be used in conjunction with Hardline or Combat Focus to get scorestreaks more easily. It may be useful with Persistence, as it antagonises the increased score needed to get scorestreaks, as that is one of the trait's main weaknesses (not to mention scorestreaks can only be attained once).

The first Legendary variant, the Aftermath is an interesting weapon, one catered to a balanced offensive/defensive build. The Legendary trait is Hitman, which will, if the user manages to kill every player on the opposing team at least once in one go, grant an incredible reduction of time needed to acquire a payload; this will not reset on death. The more "expensive" payloads such as the Eraser can benefit greatly from this gun perk. The common gun perk Stockpile removes one of the Volk's minor issues by increasing the amount of ammo in reserve as well as in each magazine. This is helpful when tackling large groups of enemies, as the Legendary traits intends.

The first Epic variant, the Goliath completely changes the weapon. It drastically increases the damage per shot, allowing the weapon to score two shot kills at most ranges, at the cost of restricting the rifle to semi-automatic fire only with a rather low firecap to boot. In addition to that, the magazine size is cut in half, down to 14 rounds, equal to that of the EMC. Despite the very low firecap as a semi-automatic weapon, calculated TTK isn't harmed very much. The Goliath makes up for this in two more areas; aside from the high damage, the weapon also has reduced recoil, making it much more controllable at range, and comes with the Focus gun perk, which reduces idle sway and further increases long range accuracy. In practical terms, this doesn't really matter, as the semi-auto nature of the Goliath means improved ammo consumption. However, on paper, assuming a 100% accuracy and ammo usage, the previous Volk variants can get two more kills per magazine than the Goliath. It is interesting to note the Goliath also receives some visual changes: the iron sights are changed to resemble those of the AK-47, the charging handle is longer, the stock becomes longer and slightly bigger, the magazines are no longer partly clear and, along with the rest of the weapon, become completely synthetic with a solid black finish.

The second Epic variant is the Corruption. It has the same Sharpshooter common gun perk as the Deadeye variant, but the weapon's Epic trait is the Mo' Money gun perk, where extra XP towards ranks is received. Actions such as regular kills will award the "Mo' Money" medal (similar to One Shot kills), and it is interesting to note that kills with this gun causes the enemy players to have money bills fly from them. In terms of physical appearance, this variant also changes drastically from the standard Volk. Most notably, the gun sports a clean Green paint and plates and synthetic black across the entire weapon. For example, the magazines now look more similar to an AK-12's magazines. Another notable thing is that the Corruption variant's stock is folded to the side, nearly resembling the AK-74u. The Corruption was initially part of the QTR-M5TR collection but was later transferred to the normal loot pools on 28 February 2017.[1]

A third Epic variant of the Volk called the Retro was added as part of the Days of Summer event and could only be obtained from a Week #3 Supply Drop during the event. Unlike the other variants of the Volk, the Retro is a ballistic rifle thanks to its Ballistic Conversion Kit, which completely changes how the weapon performs; the Retro can use ballistic weapon attachments such as Extended Mags and FMJ instead of their energy counterparts. It also gains the ability to penetrate various materials like a normal ballistic rifle. Because of this upgrade, a few things have changed to the Volk's performance. A highly noticeable change is the weapon's recoil. Instead of shooting mostly to the sides like the normal Volk, it has a mostly vertical recoil pattern.

Because of this, a Foregrip is advised to try and counter the recoil. Another change is that is has a slightly less range than the normal Volk. Aside from the Ballistic Conversion Kit, the weapon also comes with the Steady perk, giving it a tighter hipfire spread when firing from the hip. The weapon also comes with the special Days of Summer camouflage, which cannot be changed.

The March 10th, 2017 patch updated the Volk to have increased range. As such, the effectiveness of a Suppressor on the Volk has been increased, due to the range reducing effects of a Suppressor being less prominent.[2] With the September 6th, 2017 patch, the Volk - Retro variant was changed to have reduced recoil for the first few shots, as well a faster ADS time.[3]

In a later update, a variant of the Volk called the Vintage, was added to the game, essentially being a Mk II variant of the Retro, having more or less identical performance. Unlike the Retro, however, the Vintage is not a limited-time weapon and is always available for unlock and players can add their own camouflages to it, as opposed to the Retro, which is restricted to its own special camouflage.

"Full-auto ballistic rifle. Deploys best-in-class stopping power at a low, dependable fire rate. The built in Ballistic Conversion Kit overrides energy attachments to perform as their ballistic equivalents."

The weapon's highest drawback is its accuracy, as the iron sights are often useless due to the relatively high recoil and muzzle flash. Even without the Faraday Slug, the Volk has a high headshot bonus, making the attachment debatable to use. The Foregrip is a necessity, as it helps counteract the recoil to prevent missed shots. Suppressor can be effective, reducing the muzzle flash and noise of the gun drastically, while the reduced range is very unnoticeable. It can be found in multiple locations around maps such as Zombies in Spaceland, meaning that ammunition isn't very hard to come by either.

When upgraded via the Pack-a-Punch Machine, the Volk becomes the Shock Therapy, gaining increased damage, a larger magazine, and more reserve ammo. After upgrading the Pack-a-Punch Machine, the Shock Therapy can be upgraded to the Electric Boogie for $10,000. This further increases damage, magazine size, and reserve ammo.